After spending the past two years in limbo and wanting a trade out of town, he watched Cory Schneider wind up being the guy sent packing and columnist Tony Gallagher of The Province wants Luongo to quit being so dramatic about the entire situation.

Gallagher lays into Luongo for being a diva about the whole mess and says it’s time to put it in the past in his own special way.

There are those who would argue that Luongo is the totally blameless, aggrieved party in this whole sorry mess. And reading into his long period of silence, maybe Luongo was buying into that type of thinking as well, and in his heart of hearts, perhaps he still is.

But enough. Cut the melodrama already.

Yes, he mentally had checked out at the end of the season, and was expecting a trade, and that didn’t happen, and we understand that.

Fair enough, it was tough and very unusual. But couldn’t he have rolled with the punches a little better? Couldn’t he imagine he’d been traded — to Vancouver? After all, with Alain the goaltender roaster gone, there will be a whole new direction to this team, and some new, young faces.

Cutting the melodrama is a good idea, isn’t it? Ahem…

So let’s see: Luongo plays at an elite level, one that isn’t good enough to some in Vancouver despite taking the Canucks to within one win of the Stanley Cup, loses his job to Schneider and sees the writing on the wall that he’s eventually the odd-man out and wants to get out of town and he’sthe problem here?

Henrik Lundqvist has set such a high bar that his 12-8-1 record with a .912 save percentage is cause for great concern these days in New York.

That his backup, Antti Raanta, is 6-1-0 with a .932 save percentage only contributes to that concern, because if Raanta can manage those numbers, what’s Lundqvist’s excuse?

“I feel like I’m tracking the puck well, moving well,” Lundqvist told the Daily News. “It just comes down to some bad decisions at times that cost me.”

Indeed, December has not started well for The King. He’s allowed 10 goals in three starts for a save percentage of .894. In Tuesday’s 4-2 loss to the Islanders, his decision to poke check a loose puck led to the winning goal by Andrew Ladd.

PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman says there’s significant opposition among team owners to continuing participation in the Winter Olympics, and the league is running out of time on negotiations to take part in the 2018 Games.

Following a meeting of the league’s Board of Governors on Thursday, Bettman said no decision was made regarding Olympics participation in 2018 in South Korea.

“I think it’s fair to say that there is some strong negative sentiment in the room,” Bettman said. “But nothing was decided today.”

NHL players have competed in the past five Winter Olympics dating to 1998 and want to continue taking part, but owners are concerned about the midseason interruption and injury risk.

Bettman said his recent proposal to the NHL Players’ Association regarding an extension of the collective bargaining agreement in return for Olympic participation was part of a larger discussion about hockey’s international calendar.

“That discussion morphed into, `Maybe we should be talking about a long-term international schedule with predictability,”‘ Bettman said. “If you look at the calendar and you play it out in the logical sequences of the way these events get played, we said if you look at the calendar and get rid of the (CBA) reopeners and you extend by three years, that gets you two Olympics, two World Cups and two Ryder Cups.”

Such an agreement would ensure nine years of labor peace, but players rejected the proposal.

In other matters, the league gave owners a range for next season’s salary cap. Bettman projected it would remain flat or increase by about $2 million.

The NHL does not intend to reconsider the name or logo of the Las Vegas expansion franchise after U.S. patent authorities denied the club’s trademark request, deputy commissioner Bill Daly said.

“It’s much ado about nothing,” Daly said. “The franchise will go forward with that name and that logo. We have every expectation we’ll ultimately get that registration.”

Bettman has said a decision regarding the Olympics needs to be made by early January, giving the league time to create its 2017-18 schedule with or without a two-plus week break for the Olympics.

BOSTON (AP) A two-time Stanley Cup champion hockey player from Massachusetts has pleaded guilty to a federal drug charge.

The Boston Globe reports (http://bit.ly/2grdpkl ) 51-year-old Kevin Stevens entered the plea Thursday in a Boston federal court to a charge of conspiring with another man to sell oxycodone.

Prosecutors say Stevens and another man were involved in a scheme to sell the painkiller from August 2015 through at least March 2016 in several cities. A plea agreement says Stevens was responsible for 175 pills containing 30 milligrams each of oxycodone.

His attorney says Stevens has battled an addiction to painkillers for many years.

The Pembroke native played 15 seasons in the National Hockey League, winning consecutive Stanley Cups with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1991 and 1992.